Blog Anonymously • Hacker News Board

Re: Blog Anonymously

#431

Post by friendlybus » Sat, Jul 11, 2020, 12:21 PM UTC

footlose_3815 wrote: post #424

ThA0x2 wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIR: Justine Sacco still suffers from severe PTSD and has to attend regular counselling. Adria Richards fell off the face of the planet, was chronically unemployed for a while, then finally ended up at a no name company, probably making peanuts compared to where she was. James Damore was also similarly unemployed for a while, was in several lawsuits with Google, and claims to be working at a start-up, but he may als…

James Damore threw away an engineering job at Google with a long, generalized, and internally-shared rant about women, listing off their "Qualities". He then tried to start a lawsuit making it about his politics, which never went anywhere. Why is there sympathy for this man?

It was scientifically sourced and he did not spread it himself, others did that on 'his behalf' whilst also stripping out the sources.

Re: Blog Anonymously

#432

Post by friendlybus » Sat, Jul 11, 2020, 12:30 PM UTC

sophacles wrote: post #373

PenguinCoder wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That isn't "holding people accountable for their actions". It's applying today's societal standards on historic commentary. That isn't fair, that isn't 'woke', it's retribution and it's wrong.

So here's the thing: people can and do lose jobs all the time over accusations that they've done something wrong. Often this happens pre-employment when background checks are happening the company finds old posts, or old arrests or whatever. Sure they don't fire you, they just never offer you the job. Other times people are fired over stuff like getting arrested even if it's a case of mistaken identity and the person…

So you won't complain when you get fired for this comment in 20 years when I am president?

In what country were public figures ever above the law?

Pre-employment checks search for drug use and crimes, a facebook post should never be a firable or arrestable offence (outside of the 3.3k arrested in the UK).

Re: Blog Anonymously

#433

Post by kaitai » Sat, Jul 11, 2020, 1:45 PM UTC

kbenson wrote: post #186

Jolter wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn’t sound familiar at all to me. Can you give an example of such an incident?

There are links sprinkled all throughout the comments of instances of people having views erroneously attributed to them and the public pressure causing them to lose their jobs. Here's one I just read.[1] How prevalent these are, and whether they outweigh any positive effects of the behavior (or if you even believe there are positive effects) is probably a more nuanced question. 1: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/a…

I thought that was a poorly-researched article. I'm most familiar with the Holy Land Deli situation, and actually talking to employees and customers results in articles like https://sahanjournal.com/news/as-holy-land-grocery-attempts-... It discusses some of the significant problems they had with pay disparity and treatment of Black customers; racism occurs in the Muslim community as in others.

Mounk indicates oh, American dream ruined because of spoiled daughter, while actual journalism exposes systematic pay disparities and unequal treatment of customers. Huh.

I hope that Holy Land can repair relationships with the community, change its ways, and do better going forward! If it can do that, then this was in fact a net positive for our community. Don't know whether that argues for or against blogging anonymously.

Re: Blog Anonymously

#434

Post by joubert » Sat, Jul 11, 2020, 2:08 PM UTC

freedomben wrote: post #323

tristor wrote: post #187

I have often considered blogging anonymously because I do not feel free to write my nuanced philosophical views about the world anymore, as nuance is mostly dead in the public discourse and anything I write could easily offend someone and cause me problems. But I decided that if I believed something and I was willing to say it aloud, I should be willing to write it down with my name attached. In the end, it has had t…

> To a large degree, I think a lot of the challenges around nuance and offense-taking online are just a consequence of how communications being mediated by the Internet dehumanizes people. My experience has been that having a deep conversation over a drink in person generally leads to more positive outcomes, even with irreconcilable disagreements, than writing something online which can be excoriated on social media.…

> even the meat space domain seem to be getting infected with this

Nicholas Carr argues in his book, The Shallows, how technology literally shapes our brains on a fundamental, cognitive level. To the degree that it is accurate, I would expect our "meat-space" interactions to reflect.

https://www.vox.com/podcasts/2020/7/1/21308153/the-ezra-klei...

Re: Blog Anonymously

#435

Post by joubert » Sat, Jul 11, 2020, 2:12 PM UTC

nitwit005 wrote: post #276

hakka-nyu-su wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I understand the term "cancel culture", it mostly relates to celebrities who were already controversial or polarizing in some way, that were finally able to be organized against. And in many cases, the same celebrities are still able to have a career that is sometimes even boosted by their ability to campaign against "cancel culture" generally. Do you have any books/articles/resources for thinking about "cancel cu…

People will happily attack you without even reading what you have to say. People have done experiments with headlines which demonstrate as much: https://www.upworthy.com/comments-didnt-read-the-article There have been a number of incidents where people have gone after individuals, only for it to be very clear later on they'd done nothing wrong.

I'd be curious to know what % of us here:

read an article fully, then

give it due consideration, then

read the entire HN comment thread, and then

add thoughtful comments in the HN thread

Re: Blog Anonymously

#436

Post by joubert » Sat, Jul 11, 2020, 3:28 PM UTC

Thanks to so many people in this thread for thoughtful discourse and helping me on my journey to understand the issues better.

I just watched The Outrage Machine, which is a short (12mins) documentary that can help us learn.

It talks about trolling, the yearning to judge, public shaming, cancel culture, mob mentality, moral superiority, harassment, abuse.

https://www.retroreport.org/video/the-outrage-machine/

Re: Blog Anonymously

#437

Post by M2Ys4U » Sat, Jul 11, 2020, 3:39 PM UTC

ksdale wrote: post #160

M2Ys4U wrote: post #40

>We currently live in a "there is only one correct opinion, all others must be canceled" culture. We really, really aren't. >If speech has consequences that are administered outside the law, then it's not really free. Just take a moment and thing about what you just wrote. It's absolutely nonsense. I can't go in to a job interview and call the panel a bunch of cunts and then expect to be hired. That's a consequence o…

We have decided that there are limits to freedom of association, though, for example when it comes to discrimination. Forcing people to interact with others whose opinions they disagree with seems plausibly less imposing than forcing someone to interact with others whose religion they disagree with. I'm not sure this as clear-cut as you make it sound. And I think it's quite the strawman to suggest that anyone believe…

>We have decided that there are limits to freedom of association, though, for example when it comes to discrimination.

Yes, we have. And that's a good thing. But why should the same not apply to speech?

I think it's unhealthy to view rights in an absolutist manner, be that freedom of expression, freedom of association or the right to privacy.

All rights interact and are often in opposition to one another, they need to be balanced.

>And I think it's quite the strawman to suggest that anyone believes that someone should be able to direct profanity at an interviewer and get hired, and I also don't think it's productive to equate "profanity" with "views that someone disagrees with."

Perhaps. It was an attempt as reductio ad absurdum but I may have missed the mark.

After all the comment I was replying to asserted that "If speech has consequences that are administered outside the law, then it's not really free."

Re: Blog Anonymously

#438

Post by detaro » Sat, Jul 11, 2020, 3:43 PM UTC

gruez wrote: post #388

detaro wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are connections between the two though, annoyingly often. Advocating for a policy change that will ruin some people's lives. Advocating for a status quo that will ruin some people's lives. Advocating for some group of people to be fired. It doesn't make sense to see speech just as a consequence-less thing, in both directions.

You have to draw the line somewhere, right? Otherwise you get into slippery slope territory where eg. you can argue anyone who's not protesting for BLM are implicitly supporting the cops, and therefore are ruining black people's lives.

Sure. Not everything warrants a reaction, impact of speech highly depends on the speaker and context and reactions can be not proportionate. But I don't think a blanket "speech shouldn't have consequences" really works, because it will often have them, and often is intended to have them.

Re: Blog Anonymously

#439

Post by freedomben » Sat, Jul 11, 2020, 3:52 PM UTC

joubert wrote: post #434

freedomben wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To a large degree, I think a lot of the challenges around nuance and offense-taking online are just a consequence of how communications being mediated by the Internet dehumanizes people. My experience has been that having a deep conversation over a drink in person generally leads to more positive outcomes, even with irreconcilable disagreements, than writing something online which can be excoriated on social media.…

> even the meat space domain seem to be getting infected with this Nicholas Carr argues in his book, The Shallows, how technology literally shapes our brains on a fundamental, cognitive level. To the degree that it is accurate, I would expect our "meat-space" interactions to reflect. https://www.vox.com/podcasts/2020/7/1/21308153/the-ezra-klei...

Thanks for the link, that's very interesting (as unfortunate as the news it bears is).

Re: Blog Anonymously

#440

Post by M2Ys4U » Sat, Jul 11, 2020, 4:12 PM UTC

throwaway894345 wrote: post #190

M2Ys4U wrote: post #40

>We currently live in a "there is only one correct opinion, all others must be canceled" culture. We really, really aren't. >If speech has consequences that are administered outside the law, then it's not really free. Just take a moment and thing about what you just wrote. It's absolutely nonsense. I can't go in to a job interview and call the panel a bunch of cunts and then expect to be hired. That's a consequence o…

>> We currently live in a "there is only one correct opinion, all others must be canceled" culture. > We really, really aren't. Perhaps it would be better to say that there is a lot of powerful people who are working very hard to create such a culture, but they haven't yet fully achieved their mission. There's no clear definition for when something becomes "a culture of cancellation", but a lot of people are reportin…

>Perhaps it would be better to say that there is a lot of powerful people who are working very hard to create such a culture, but they haven't yet fully achieved their mission.

I don't even think that is true. In fact in the overwhelming number of cases cited that I have seen the power dynamic seems to be the other way around.

In other words, it's about holding people with more power/privilege/status to account.

>There's no clear definition for when something becomes "a culture of cancellation"

I agree, which is why I think it's wrong to say that we do live in such a culture.

>but a lot of people are reporting that they are afraid to run afoul of the progressive party line for fear of repercussions.

I have (some) sympathy for that feeling, but I think most of the time it's unjustified. Like there's some "woke mob" who's coming to cancel you for not realising you're using the wrong pronouns to refer to somebody or something. That... just doesn't happen.

>Of course no one is talking about "calling your interviewer a cunt and not getting hired" when they talk about "cancel culture". Name one prominent instance wherein this happened and it was widely condemned as "cancel culture". This seems highly disingenuous.

I'm not saying that has actually ever happened. It's an absurd scenario - that was the point - but I concede I may have gone too far.

The person I was replying to asserted that "if speech has consequences that are administered outside the law, then it's not really free". Insulting an interview panel is an example of where it would be entirely reasonable for there to be consequences administered outside the law.

>“Freedom of expression is the matrix, the indispensable condition, of nearly every other form of freedom.” > >—U.S. Supreme Court Justice Benjamin N. Cardozo in Palko v. Connecticut

That just re-enforces my point. Instead of appealing to authority, can you explain WHY is it the matrix of nearly every other form of freedom. HOW is it the matrix for nearly every other form of freedom?

In Europe we have a comprehensive rights framework in the form of the European Convention on Human Rights[0]. The Convention includes, amongst others, the right to life (Article 2), the right to a respect for a private and family life (Article 8), and the prohibition of discrimination (Article 14).

None of these strictly have a dependency on freedom of expression (Article 10).

One of the principles of the ECHR is that rights should not be wielded as to undermine the others (Article 17) and courts must balance rights against each other if they're naturally in competition with each other.

I think the American "free speech over everything else" fundamentally stems from the fact that the US doesn't really have (m)any other fundamental rights. When all you have is a hammer...

[0] https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/European_Convention_for_the_P...